Twitter boosts public share offering value to as much as $2bn - pushing up
overall value of company to as much as $13.9bn

Twitter has raised the target price range for its initial public offering and will close the books to investors a day earlier than planned, following strong demand from would-be shareholders.

The social network, which allows users to post 140-character messages at a time, had been aiming to sell 70m shares at between $17 and $20 apiece, but increased its target to between $23 and $25 on Monday. If it reaches the top end of that range, Twitter will raise $1.75bn, and float with an initial market capitalisation of $13.6bn.

The price hike follows a warm reception from investors who attended Twitter’s roadshow last week, but is likely to stoke fears that its ambitions could be over-inflated, potentially putting the social network on course for a repeat of Facebook’s stuttering market debut.

Facebook also increased its target just ahead of its IPO in May 2012, and floated at the top end of its range. However, it quickly crashed and took more than year to recover the lost ground. The episode rattled investors’ faith in the technology sector and sparked fears of a new dotcom bubble.

Twitter has been careful to avoid the hype that preceded Facebook’s flotation, initially pricing its IPO lower than analysts had expected. The San Francisco business also opted to float on the New York Stock Exchange instead of the Nasdaq, which is traditionally favoured by technology companies but suffered a damaging glitch when Facebook started trading.

However, Twitter still faces a challenge to convince would-be shareholders that it is a worthwhile bet. The eight-year-old company doubled revenues to $168.6m in the quarter to the end of September, helped by a surge in mobile usage. However, net losses widened to $64.6m from $21.6m a year earlier.

Twitter will close its book to investors at midday on Tuesday in New York, a day before it finalises the IPO price of shares. It will begin trading on Thursday, under the ticker “TWTR”.